Thursday, 3 January 2013

Nobody likes a perfect character.
Someone who is super good at everything and gets everything right is annoying.

Even the most suave secret agents
of indestructible superheroes need to make mistakes in order to make the story
interesting.

There are two parts to using
wrongness in a story. There’s the actual mistake (which sometimes isn’t known
to be a mistake at the time), and there’s the consequences of the mistake,
usually forcing the character to deal with powerful feeling of guilt or regret.

The mistake the character makes
is more impactful on the reader if we see it happen. In some stories a
character may be dealing with something that happened a long time a go. A cop
who shot the wrong guy is now a washed up private eye. That sort of backstory
is fine, but it won't have real meaning for readers if they don't see
it happen.

A mistake in and of itself won’t
automatically be fascinating. Like any element of a story, it needs to be
interesting. If the guy mentioned above was chasing a thief and shot and
missed, killing an innocent bystander, that’s perfectly plausible, but it’s
also perfectly dull.

There are many reasons for a
mistake beyond an accident, and the more intentional and purposeful it is, i.e.
the more the character is responsible for his own actions, the better.

Stupidity

Some characters are just dumb.
The useless guy in a gang of robbers or in an army unit. The girl who’s dancing
with headphones on while a killer runs round the house stabbing everyone. The
kid who never knows what’s going on. These sorts of characters can be very
annoying, which is probably why they don’t make for good lead characters (and
usually end up dying first).

It can often feel reasonable to
attribute a character’s actions to their dumbness, certainly it happens in real
life all the time, but you have to be careful not to use it as a convenient
excuse for unlikely events. Characters like this are okay in small doses or for
comic relief, but nobody wants to follow an idiot around for 300 pages.

Wrong Belief

Sometimes a character can have
strongly held but completely mistaken beliefs. It can be a belief in someone or
something. The thing about belief is you don’t need proof. Whether it’s a
religion or a best friend, you take it for granted that what you believe is
true.

While it’s hard to show that,
what you can show is how the character acts because of his or her beliefs.Showing that belief being tested and how the
character stands up for their beliefs establishes their position so that when
they do make their mistake later on, we can see their reasons.

Wrong Conclusion

Unlike beliefs, some character
have facts at their disposal that lead them to do terrible things. Taking clear,
incontrovertible information and then logically coming to a mistaken conclusion
is something that happens all the time. However, in order for the reader to be
able to follow why the character does what he does, the writer needs to show
that logical progression.

This can lead to long, boring
exposition, or it can become very convoluted and hard to follow. But when done
properly (and hopefully concisely), it can be very effective.

Misled

Sometimes a character can
intentionally be given misleading information. Being manipulated by others is a
powerful narrative device because it gives the character a definite next step
and somewhere for them to focus their anger.

You do have to be careful that
you give the misleaders a proper reason for wanting to mislead our hero.Just because they’re the bad guys isn’t going
to be enough, they have to have a goal of their own.

Discovery

Once the mistake has been made,
at some point the character will need to realise their error. The way they find out can obviously be many and
varied, but the important thing is for it to happen in front of the reader. It
also helps if other characters are there to witness it, or maybe even profit by it.

The realisation that they were
wrong really needs to be the focus. How a character reacts emotionally to this
knowledge, whether guilt, remorse , anger or even denial, will set you up for
the next stage of the story.

It can be difficult for a writer
to put a favourite character through that kind of experience, but it’s the
ideal time to really get the boot in. As long as you keep in mind that they
will emerge from the ashes stronger than before, you should be able to convince
yourself it’s worth the agony you’re putting them through.

Reaction

It’s not enough to realise the
error of your ways, you have to then decide what to do about it. Whatever
mistakes the character made, there should be consequences and repercussions,
and the character responsible shouldn't shy away from dealing with them.

Running away and hiding from the
world may seem like a reasonable reaction, and it may even suit the personality
of your character, but it rarely serves the story. The whole point of putting a
character in this position is to show what they do about it and how it changes
them.

A change of heart where we can
see the process from beginning to end, why the character thinks one way and
what makes them change their mind, is an incredibly powerful narrative device
in fiction, and one that requires things to get worse before they get better. But the character that emerges after facing the mistakes they made will be all the more interesting for it.

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In the second Sherlock Holmes movie, Holmes makes a terrible miscalculation which results in some dignitaries getting blown up. He's all smug about how he prevented the disaster, then the bomb goes off. His "OMG I made a mistake" reaction was perfect, and mirrored my own as a viewer. Highly effective device to keep the hero humble (somewhat).

This is a great post. I love flawed characters. For example: some people say Superman is boring. That's true because he's too perfect...too powerful. Characters need weaknesses and wrongs to make them interesting.

It's helpful to see these broken down into different categories. This is certainly one area in my writing I just pants, without thinking about the specifics of my characters' mistakes. Something I may need to take a closer look at. Tweeting & bookmarking

I like flawed characters too, but it's funny when readers are like, "I hated this book because the main character did so many stupid things!" I guess there's a fine line between frustration with characters, and pure annoyance.

Well put, Moody. Perfection is stupid. And stupid only works for so long. But characters being wrong -- and then overreacting or blindly following their mistaken beliefs -- is the entire basis for my novel. Without that, my story would be dumb as toast. And not nearly as tasty.

I love when characters make mistakes in mysteries, otherwise it'd be solved all too quickly. Mind you, when some of the clues are too obvious and the detective still gets it wrong because it's too early to identify the villain, I do struggle with that (makes the detective seem thick).

I agree completely that characters should be allowed to be wrong. As a matter of fact, in all of my writing whether it for a YA audience or adults my characters all have their flaws. Sometimes they overcome them. Other times it's far more difficult. There's no one right way to create a character. What I often do is start off with the warts of a character and as the book progresses that character works on becoming a better person, or a better cop. In my Shamra Chronicles the main character, Dara, has warts galore. Over the course of the trilogy she confronts them. Some she overcomes. Others (being stubborn and impatient) continue to plague her even though even with these she grows with time. So, yes, create characters with flaws. There are no humans without them and it makes little sense (and it's often boring) to create characters too good to be true.